There are many reasons why users may wish to be reminded about activities. Ways of alerting reminding users of activities have existed for a long time. These range from old-fashioned alarms to web-based or mobile device applications. Taking a mobile device application as an example, a user will typically set a task (e.g. buy more milk) and a time to be reminded (e.g. tomorrow at 8:00 am). The mobile device application will then issue the reminder (e.g. using an audible alert with an onscreen notification) at the preset/predefined time.
There are many situations where the reminder is very important. For example, a patient with a long term health condition may have a therapeutic regime prescribed by a doctor, that the patient should then adhere to at set time periods or within certain time boundaries. The therapeutic regime may manage the patient's symptoms, with the objective of the therapeutic regime being to manage the patient's condition and to help to achieve a positive therapy outcome. It will be appreciated that non-adherence with the therapeutic regime may cause the patient's health to deteriorate.
For many long term health conditions, the therapeutic regime requires medication to be taken regularly (e.g. one dose, three times a day). If the medication is not taken regularly, or is not taken in the correct amounts (i.e. if the therapeutic regime is not adhered to), the clinical outcome may be impacted. It is known to use conventional reminder system approaches (e.g. mobile device applications) to attempt to encourage users to adhere to their therapeutic regime (e.g. by taking their medication on time).
It is also known to provide dedicated devices for medication management. These are generally dispensers that can be programmed to issue alerts and release medication at pre-defined times. They often include a means of monitoring compliance by way of detecting if the medication has been removed from the dispenser. As an example of such devices, EP2485704 discloses a medication dispenser that provides a reminder in the form of light and sound emitted by the dispenser itself The dispenser can connect to a remote server to exchange information on the dispensing and the patient's adherence.
All the conventional systems mentioned above provide reminders through a preset device at preset times of the day, depending on how they are configured. This approach is, however, inflexible. As a consequence, it allows for providing reminders at moments when the user is not in the vicinity of the device, in which case the user will miss the reminder.